Charnel House

by Anderson, Fred

  “Ain’ no spider over dere,” Luis said. His voice sounded thick, slurred. Garraty took his gaze off the knife long enough to glance at his friend. Luis’s eyes had taken the same half-lidded look as the boy’s, only they still shone with life. He tried to stand on shaky legs and almost fell back to the couch. A sloppy grin twisted his face into a caricature. “Need to go, amigo. Tink I had one too many.”

  “Toomey,” the boy said, and began to shuffle toward Garraty, limping because he only wore one shoe. As he approached he brought the knife up, pointing it ahead of him like a spear. His arm, shattered when the Prius went over him, had nearly straightened, and he held the knife with a strong grip.

  He isn’t here, Garraty’s mind insisted. He’s under the house, in the ground. Speaking of ground, stand yours. Your imagination can’t hurt you.

  The boy moved around the end of the coffee table, as inexorable as the tide. Fear grew in Garraty like a malignant tumor, threatening to overtake him. Still, he kept his seat and watched the boy draw near. The air carried the oh-so-familiar stench of the shit that filled the boy’s jeans. Garraty covered his mouth with one hand and focused on not hurling. He’d done enough of that already.

  Luis put his hands out to steady himself. “Chit, man, I tink you got a strong batch of dat stuff or somethin’. Feel like I been drinkin’ tequila.”

  “Sure you don’t want to stay a little longer?” Garraty asked. He heard the strain in his voice, but Luis seemed not to notice. Can’t hurt me. Can’t hurt me. “We don’t have to drink.”

  “Nah, man, I got to go sleep this chit off.” He staggered toward the door, still keeping his hands out for balance.

  The boy reached him and slashed the knife at Garraty, and even though he saw it flay the skin of his left forearm open it didn’t hurt, not at first. Freshets of hot blood sprayed from the wound, soaking his shirt. Garraty kicked the boy in the gut, more out of reflex than conscious thought. The kid stumbled back a step or two, caught his balance, and came for him again. He feels so solid, the impartial voice in his head noted, and then the boy was slashing at him with the knife, this time carving a wide mouth across the back of his good hand. Garraty screamed and slapped at the blade, flinging a spray of blood over the dead boy. His arm felt like it had been dipped in acid.

  “Whafuck?” Luis said, trying to turn around. He lost his balance and stumbled into the wall. “What you yellin’ for?”

  The knife came up a third time and for Garraty that was the charm. He bawled with fear and scrambled away from the too-real figment of his imagination, blood pattering from his arm to the carpet in a hard rain. He leapt onto the coffee table to escape the shambling nightmare and it collapsed under him in a cacophony of splintering wood, dumping him unceremoniously to the brown carpet. The trailer shuddered on its supports.

  “Wadded,” the boy said.

  Garraty crabbed across the floor on his back, moaning and crying and bleeding, pieces of the broken table digging into his back.

  “Chit, amigo, you hurt!” Luis cried. “Dat table fuck up your arm!”

  From the dead boy: “Jew due.”

  Luis lumbered toward the kitchen, holding out his arms like a man on a tightrope. “Put pressure on it, Joe, I get you some paper towels!”

  Neither Garraty nor the boy paid the short man any mind. The boy shuffled across the remnants of the table, kicking them aside as he approached. Figments can’t interact, can’t kick... can’t cut Garraty’s mind jabbered. He wished he could shut it off.

  “Toomey!” the boy insisted.

  Luis hurried through the doorway into the kitchen, and sudden fluorescent light bathed the carpet in a white triangle that reached toward the walking corpse. “What de fuuu—”

  Garraty heard the slick squeak of rubber soles on wet linoleum, a short grunt of surprise, and then something smashed into the floor hard enough to shake the trailer. Goddamn thing’s going to collapse before the night is over. The thought flittered through his mind like a darting insect. Twisting to look, he saw the curly thatch of Luis’s onyx hair through the doorway. He wasn’t moving. The brutal projector in Garraty’s head cued up a movie of his friend slipping in the puddle of vomit and going ass over teakettle like Charlie Chaplin in an old black-and-white film, only instead of ending with canned laughter this pratfall ended with a snapped neck. I sets ‘em up and I knocks ‘em down. Let dem bones crack to a rockin’ laugh track.

  “Toomey!” the dead boy muttered again, and plunged the green-handled knife into Garraty’s right calf.

  He bellowed and kicked wildly with his other foot. The heel of his shoe connected solidly with the kid’s forehead, making a very satisfying thwack. The boy fell away from him.

  Garraty rolled onto his belly and struggled to get to his feet. He was starting to feel lightheaded now. Blood loss, the clinician in his head told him. Luis was right about putting pressure on it. He cradled his arm and stepped over Luis into the kitchen, hoping he wasn’t straddling a corpse. There were cleaning towels in the utility closet. He’d get one in a minute. First, he wanted a way to deal with his problem. There was a bigger knife—a goddamn butcher knife so large it could have been stolen from the set of a horror movie—in the same drawer where the kid had gotten the one he stabbed Garraty with.

  The trashcan lay on its side next to the fridge, empty beer cans scattered across the floor like dead soldiers on a battlefield. Garraty yanked the drawer open hard enough to completely pull it off the glides and it crashed to the linoleum. Silverware and Pabst empties flashed and flickered and spun away in a discordant jangle. The knife he wanted ended up most of the way under the refrigerator, the pointed end of its blade a shark fin gleaming among the dust bunnies. He dove for it, then turned to get the humming appliance at his back. Ready for an attack.

  None came.

  The only sounds Garraty heard were his own labored breathing and the doopdoopdoop of blood hitting the floor as it dripped from his dangling fingertips. Another wave of dizziness washed over him and he sagged against the refrigerator. He was going to pass out if he didn’t do something about the bleeding. Facing the doorway so he’d see the boy if he came back for another round, Garraty eased around the hulking white fridge until his back bumped into the utility room door. He reached around and pulled it open. The towels were on the shelf next to the basket where he kept his meager tool collection, and he looked away from the doorway long enough to snatch one from the stack.

  He used the knife to separate the towel into two pieces. One he knotted around his right hand—getting to be good at this, his muse offered—and the other he simply folded in half and pressed over the gash on his left forearm. He was going to need stitches, lots of them, when this was over. The little fucker had gotten the best of him, that was for sure. He wouldn’t be so lucky again.

  Garraty bent his left arm up and grabbed a handful of shirt at his shoulder. His bicep did a good job of holding the towel in place over the forearm wound, he thought. Enough for him to free up his right hand so he could fight if he had to. Bolts of pain shot through his arm and up his leg, keeping pace with his thundering heart.

  He steeled his nerves. Maybe the kid would stay dead if he were killed a second time.

  Luis lay in a sprawl on his back by the cabinets near the sink, mostly covering the puddle of blood-laced vomit. A thin crimson trickle ran from the ear Garraty could see, and his eyes were partly open, showing white. His chest rose and fell slowly, but rhythmically. Good. There was no sign of the dead boy beyond the doorway at his head.

  “Luis,” Garraty said in a low voice. Watching the section of the front room visible to him.

  Luis did not respond.

  Garraty crept forward, his eyes darting from his friend to the next room and back. Where was the little fuck? He tapped one of Luis’s feet with his own. Nothing. He did it a second time, harder, and Luis’s scuffed loafer scooted across the floor, leaving a streak of watery vomit on the linoleum. Luis snorted once—or maybe it was a snore
—but didn’t stir. Garraty didn’t like the thin trickle of blood he saw in his friend’s ear, or the way his eyes weren’t completely closed. Some dim memory told him that was bad news. Concussion, maybe. Or worse. The patient is exhibiting signs of a subdural hematoma, Dr. Garraty. Recommend a hemicraniectomy to relieve the intracranial pressure, stat.

  He moved a little closer to the opening, leery of the part of the room he couldn’t see. The kid could be just around the corner, waiting for him to poke his head through the doorway like a stupid teenager in a bad horror movie. While this felt like a bad horror movie, Garraty was no stupid teenager. Stepping over Luis once more, he edged forward, the countertop pressing into his ass. As more of the front room came into view he tensed and tightened his grip on the butcher knife.

  Keeping to the left side, the one closest to the back wall of trailer, Garraty crouched and leaned over the threshold so he could see the rest of the room. The coffee table had been turned into kindling when he fell on it. Droplets of blood dotted the wood, bright dapples of color against the pale oak pieces. No sign of the boy. He could see the front door now, still closed and latched. The kid had to have gone down the hall, to the bedroom or bathroom. Maybe he finally decided to wipe, the cheerful voice in—

  “Wadded!” the dead boy rasped from just behind him in the kitchen. Garraty had an instant to wonder how the fuck the kid had gotten past him and then the knife was arcing down past his right ear like a stainless steel lightning bolt, skewering the soft meat of his cheek and pinning his tongue to the bottom of his mouth. With a flick of the boy’s now healed wrist, the knife peeled away a section of Garraty’s face in a thick fleshy flap and split his tongue into two wriggling halves.

  Salty-sweet blood flooded his mouth and cascaded down his face. The butcher knife slipped from his grip, forgotten. Dimly, he was aware of the sound of his own pulse in his ears, a rhythmic chewchewchewchew that reminded him of the time he visited the obstetrician with Tina and listened to the tiny hearts of the twins beating in sync through the ultrasound machine, and the thought brought a faint unconscious smile to the side of his face that still worked right. There was no pain on the other, just a blessed numbness between his eyes and his chin, and Garraty knew he was going to die.

  He thought that might not be such a bad thing.

  The back wall was a bland white magnet pulling him to it, and he let himself go willingly. He collapsed against it and slid to the floor, leaving a smear of blood like a giant question mark on the smooth surface.

  “Jew due!”

  Garraty tried to raise his head so he could look up at the boy but he was too tired. His body felt so goddamn heavy. Cool air whistled through the hole in the side of his face with each breath, chilling his teeth. The metallic scent of blood filled the room, stronger even than the shit smell that baked off the boy like a fever. At the edges of his vision black motes whirled and darted like insects.

  Why hadn’t the kid finished him yet? Was he just going to stand there and watch as Garraty bled out?

  He’s giving you a taste of your own medicine.

  Moving as slowly as an octogenarian, Garraty rolled onto his back to face his attacker. The boy loomed over him, not short at all from this perspective. Gore streaked his right hand—no longer hamburger but completely whole as far as Garraty could tell—and the edge of the stubby knife blade shone red and wet. Red and wet with his blood.

  Fury rose in him like a dark tide at the sight of it. What had he done to deserve this? He didn’t ask for the kid to run out into the road without bothering to look first. Christ, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Story of his life, right? It wasn’t fair that the kid—this phantasm dredged up from the depths of his subconscious—should win.

  The boy regarded him with emotionless half-lidded eyes. No triumphant gleam brightened them, no smug look of satisfaction pulled at his distended features. The anger he thought he’d seen moments before was gone, and nothing had taken its place. His slack cold flesh held no feeling at all that Garraty could sense.

  And that made him even more furious than seeing his blood on the knife in the boy’s hand.

  Fuck you, kid. And the goddamn horse you rode in on.

  “Toomey,” the boy said, and raised the knife.

  Garraty found the strength to raise himself onto his elbows.

  “Not gonna be that easy, kid,” he said, and drove the heel of his shoe into the dead boy’s crotch. A bolt of pain shot up his leg, and he thought he might have just made the stab wound in his calf a little worse. The boy stumbled back, that terrible blank expression never leaving his face, and tripped over Luis. He went down in a heap next to the unconscious man, scattering empty beer cans and silverware across the floor. Immediately he started to get up again, his half-lidded green eyes locked onto Garraty’s, unwavering.

  What a terrible thing to lose feeling in one’s nards, the chirpy voice in Garraty’s head offered. The good side of his face pulled into a humorless smile, and he rolled onto his belly. Cords standing out on his neck, he began the arduous task of climbing to his feet. From the corner of his eye he saw the boy, slowly and methodically clambering up like one of the zombies from that TV show Tina liked so much. He seemed dazed, confused, like he wasn’t sure what he was doing. And they’re off, ladies and gentlemen! Will it be The Little Dead That Could Boy or Cuckoo Kid Killer? Come one, come all, place your bets!

  Garraty got to his hands and knees and then pulled his working leg under him so that he was kneeling. Placing both hands on that knee, he pushed up with his leg and down with his arms, and slowly rose into a standing position. The world took a sudden tilt as he got upright and he limp-staggered to the corner wall, hugging it for balance. And it’s Cuckoo Kid Killer by a nose!

  He looked down at the butcher knife on the carpet. Would it stop the boy? Maybe. Maybe not. The bigger question was whether or not he could actually bend and pick it up. He thought the answer to that question was likely not. The way his head was swimming and whirling he imagined trying to stoop would send him reeling head-first into the other wall, adding a new splotch of blood for the tittle of the question mark he’d left earlier. If that happened, he doubted he’d be able to get up again. The fat lady’s already warming up, Garraty my man, best just turn tail and run.

  He was beginning to think he wouldn’t be able to win a fight with the boy anyway. It was apparent the kid had no intentions of abiding by the rules of the physical world. Neither Luis nor the old lady had been able to see or hear him, and it simply wasn’t possible for someone to heal as quickly as the boy had. Even if Garraty managed to get the butcher knife in his hand and drive it home, he thought maybe it wouldn’t hurt the boy at all. Perhaps his skin would part bloodlessly, like latex, only to heal itself as soon as he pulled the blade out. Perhaps the sharp steel wouldn’t even penetrate, just deflect off to one side or the other, sinking into the wall as if his skin were some kind of high-tech armor.

  Or perhaps your hand would go right through him this time because you can’t hurt something that’s not there.

  Garraty found the thought unsettling.

  He heard the squeak of a sneaker on wet linoleum. The boy was up. Garraty pushed away from the wall and hobbled toward the front door. Luis was on his own. The kid didn’t seem interested in him, anyway. The floor seemed to tilt and roll before him, and the door was a wavering thing from a carnival funhouse. The motes swimming at the periphery of his vision swelled into black thunderheads that threatened to blind him.

  “Wadded,” the boy said, from directly behind him.

  Garraty screamed. Redoubling his efforts, he reeled into the flimsy door and caught hold of the deadbolt knob with blood-slicked fingers. He didn’t look back, because he was afraid of what he might see. The bolt clacked into its recess and he yanked the door open.

  “Jew due.”

  Bright pain lanced his side as the knife slid into his flesh near his armpit and Garraty screamed again, his voice raw and cracked. He
stumbled onto the top step and tried for the next one, but his injured leg buckled and before he could do anything he found himself on the ground in front of the trailer. The thin thread that held his mind tethered to his body like a balloon seemed to have snapped. Distantly, he thought he heard someone crying.

  “Toomey.”

  The grass felt so soft on the side of his face! A weed poked through the split made by the knife and tickled at the roof of his mouth. The scent of raw onion filled the air, and it made him think of the long summer days of his childhood when he mowed lawns with Tanner Frank for spending money. He could see nothing now but swirling blackness, and a small patch of illuminated grass right in front of him. He felt calm, adrift in a peaceful sea. A man could die worse than this. The voice in his head seemed as far away as whoever was crying.

  There was a bare foot in the patch of grass, small and dirty and streaked with blood and vomit. A child’s foot. The jeans-clad leg attached to it ascended into the maelstrom of black ringing his vision. He didn’t need to look up to know who the leg belonged to.

  As the darkness swallowed him, Garraty realized the person he heard crying was him.